Another Top-10 List — The Most Endangered Jobs in 2014

As a now 60 year old, I have seen a revolution in jobs across the economic landscape during my life. Think of this as the next iteration of the industrial revolution.

Just 30 years ago, the travel agency business was prolific, growing and well paying. Today it has been usurped by the internet from primary delivery firms (such as hotels, airlines and cruise lines) and resellers of these services (such as Expedia®, travelocity®, KAYAK®, Priceline®, Orbitz® and hotwire®, to name just a few). Expedia, for example, was not even created until 1996 and is indicative of the structural change in how we get our business, entertainment and personal tasks completed.

So what are the careers facing the greatest projected decline from 2012 to 2022 among the 200 examined?

As you can see, the big impact is coming from anything previously paper based (news, data, entertainment, reading, advertising, billing) and from segments where changing technology either decreases demand for workers, or in many cases makes the career track completely redundant. The third impact involves consolidation, such as in farming and airlines.

CareerCast assists job seekers from creating resumes to finding jobs and for employers to post positions on multiple sites.

In my own career, I have not seen a decline in demand for economists. What has changed, however, are the cost, availability and timeliness of data used by economists. Just 30 years ago, we all waited for print mail or faxes for data. And then once the data were obtained, someone had to enter them in some form into computers for further analyses. Today, given the internet, data access is generally immediate, has little if any cost, and is available in an array of electronic formats.

One thing I do know is that change is forever ongoing. When I was a graduate student at Texas A&M in the 1970s, the Real Estate Center had an ongoing course titled Adapt, Mutate, Migrate or Die. [A business perspective from Charles Darwin.] Not much has changed today.

Continuous improvement in workers’ skill sets is imperative to optimize their economic opportunities, and in many circumstances that includes complete career changes.